Center of Gravity - Prologue

Kaff gave Bennett a grimace.
“Yeah, never heard that one before,” he muttered. He measured the serum into
the syringe and jabbed the needle into the tiny port in his arm.

“What happens if you skip?”
asked Tobi, the newby of the crew. The Chief had hired him for his brawn. Kaff
wished they could have left his mouth at the station.

“His bones melt,” said Bennett.

“Whuffor?” Tobi asked.

“Allergic,” Kaff said, carefully
putting the syringe back in the case.

“To bones?”

“To calcium.” He held up a vial.
“That’s why the shots. Liquid bones.”

He stowed the case in his locker
and climbed into his heavy mining suit. The servos on the left were still a
little slow. He’d have Yvey look at them when he got back. Tobi checked the
seal on his helmet, and they followed the chief out to the airlock.

“Looks like one of them old
Koosh balls,” Tobi said.

Kaff wasn’t sure what a Koosh
ball was, but he had to admit this was the weirdest asteroid in the Belt. White
spires thrust out from a small, solid core. Tobi jetted to a peak and held out
his hand. What looked like solid rock gave way to his touch and drifted about
like powder.

Tobi revved up his pack and flew
through the spire. The top disintegrated into a cloud.

“Uh, Tobes?”

“Yeah, boss?” came a voice from
somewhere in the cloud.

“Knock it off.”

“OK, boss.” He flew out of the
powder, wiping his visor. “Man, can’t see a thing.”

Kaff couldn’t see Bennett give
his patented eye-roll through the tinted visor, but he could practically hear
it. They jetted a quarter of the way around the asteroid, looking for a clear
spot.

“This looks good,” Bennett said.
A blank maw sank into darkness where a handful of spires had been removed. “Any
readings?”

Kaff checked his wrist. “Nothin’
more than what we had before. I don’t think these spikes are dense enough to
block anything.”

They fell into the dark slowly,
feeble helmet lights revealing little. As they reached the core, white spires
were replaced by something darker, a smooth-bored tunnel, drill-marks still evident
in the surface.

“Wait!” Kaff pulled it back. The
face inside was gone. In its place, powder floated around inside the helmet
like a beige snow globe.

Bennett floated over to them.
“What in the world…”

Kaff flickered his wristdisk,
pulling up the suit’s data log. “Structural integrity’s intact. Mass is about
twenty percent what it should be. Water content is…”

He looked at Bennett who had
leaned over to catch the readout. “Zero? How’s that possible?”

The beigy-brown powder settled
against the inside of the visor, blocking any view inside. “They’re
desiccated,” Kaff said.

“What’s that?” Tobi said.

“No, wait! Idiot.” Bennett
growled and followed the newbie deeper into the pit.

As they approached, a growing
glow shone from the center of the asteroid. A curved surface, six feet across,
seemed to mark the nucleus. Around them, the ice picked up the light, casting
odd shadows and reflections.

The surface was covered with
thousands of multi-colored, translucent dots in a random pattern. On the upper
left, a panel cast a silhouette against the light coming from within.

“I’m so out of here,” Tobi said.
Bennett grabbed a strap on his boot before he could get far.

“What do you think?” he asked
Kaff.

Kaff had the irrational urge to
rub his chin, impossible in the suit. “I think we better avoid that panel.
Maybe keep a layer of ice around this bad boy while we dig it out.”

“You’re nuts,” Tobi said.

Bennett unlatched the six-foot
hand drill from the back of Tobi’s air tanks. “Yeah. But we’re gonna be rich
nuts.”

It took four days before Tobi
thought to run the tests that determined the ice was the purest form of water
ever seen. That made the next two weeks a bit easier, as they drank their fill.
Kaff thought it tasted flat, but it beat the recycled garbage they’d been
drinking for the last several months. They moved the previous crew back to their
ship. Maybe they’d take them back, but they’d all been reduced to dust, and
it’d be a bear to clean the suits. The tanks did come in handy.

Kaff gratefully latched his
cutter onto the wall and jetted for the top. They’d cleared a chasm around the
circumference of the orb and were now working on a series of cross-lines.

“Man, this is taking too long,”
Tobi said for the hundredth time.

“Shut up,” Bennett said.

“He’s right, boss,” Kaff said.
“If we have to clear this bugger out all the way ‘round, we’re going to run out
of supplies.” They’d already broken into the first crew’s galley.

“We’ll just have to come back,” Bennett
said. “Tobi, throw down that tow cable.”

“How’re we gonna do that?” Kaff
asked. “Folks’ll ask questions. How’re we gonna get the funds for another—” He
jerked away as the weighted end of the tow cable flew past.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Tobi called
from above. “I’ll swing it back.”

“We’ll think of something,” Bennett
said. “Without partners. Maybe we can claim that other ship as salvage.”

Kaff wondered how he’d read his
mind. A light fell over them. He looked up to see the shear wall in front of
them fall away.

“Tobi, what’s going on?” he
yelled up.

“Sorry. The weight hit the wall.
I guess it was too thin to take it.” He giggled.

Bennett scrambled. “Get out! Get
out!” He hit his thrusters, catching Kaff in his wash and pushing him down.

“Why?” Tobi asked.

Kaff recovered and followed Bennett,
a safe distance to the side. “Because that control panel-lookin’ thing’s on the
other side of this wall.”

When Kaff reached Tobi, the boy
still hadn’t moved. He pulled the suit around and stared into the tinted visor.
Kaff had seen convulsions that bad one other time—a buddy coming off a bad drug
trip. He pressed his visor against Tobi’s. All he could hear was gurgling and
sickeningly liquid coughs.

The boy’s face stretched across
his skull, his lips pulling back from his teeth. Tobi gave one last great
shudder and was still.

Kaff shivered as he stared at
the partially dehydrated face grinning at him with bright blue teeth.

By the time he reached the ship
with Tobi’s remains, Bennett was long gone, carried away by his jet pack. Kaff
hailed him, but received no response. Eventually the jets would run out of fuel
and Bennett would sail for parts unknown.

The entire way back to Ruby
Station, Kaff racked his brains. What would he tell the cops? He had no idea
what the orb was, or what it did to poor Tobi and Bennett.